Jaguar's road to recovery unmapped

Some Native American cultures attribute
divine power and magical stealth to the American jaguar -- traits
that could come in handy now that the endangered cat won’t be
getting a federal recovery plan.

The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service announced in mid-January that creating a recovery
plan for borderland jaguars would “not be sensible.”

Under the Endangered Species Act, a recovery plan is
required for any listed plant or animal, unless the agency decides,
as in the jaguar’s case, that a plan “will not promote
the conservation of the species.”

Fish and Wildlife
claims that the jaguar’s Arizona and New Mexico habitat --
and the four male cats known to prowl in the region -- are not
critical to the overall survival of the species, whose range
extends from Arizona to northern Argentina. The four males are
thought to be members of a core Mexican population 130 miles south
of the border, where recovery efforts are also under way.

The recovery of U.S. jaguar populations depends solely on the
health of those Mexican populations, says Bill Van Pelt of the
Arizona Department of Game and Fish. “We could do everything
in the world in the U.S. to help the jaguar and that will not save
it,” he says. “If (the Mexican) population winks out,
the odds of jaguars surviving in the U.S. are very, very, very
low.”

Other experts argue for the importance of the
U.S. jaguar population. The nonprofit Center for Biological
Diversity sued the agency last year for neither developing a
recovery plan nor designating critical habitat. And in June 2007,
over 500 members of the American Society of Mammalogists, an
organization of professional scientists, unanimously passed a
resolution asking the Fish and Wildlife Service for a recovery plan
and critical habitat, which the society says is essential for the
species’ survival.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is
overlooking the fact that substantial populations of jaguars once
roamed North America, says Joe Cook, a member of the society and
biologist at the University of New Mexico. “Fish and Wildlife
claims we only have peripheral males here, but that just
doesn’t hold water,” he says. “The U.S. needs to
take a lead role in conservation efforts of the jaguar. If we
don’t, how much pressure is on other countries to help the
jaguar?”

With border fencing projects already
slicing into the big cat’s range, Cook believes U.S. jaguar
recovery interests will collide with homeland security. “The
big looming issue is the borderland fence,” says Cook.
“Once you cut and fragment range, you’ve basically got
a huge threat to north and south populations.”

Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity compares
the jaguar’s plight to that of the gray wolf, which had
significant populations in Canada and but much smaller populations
in the U.S. before reintroduction efforts began in the Northern
Rockies.

“If the administration had applied this
same logic to gray wolves, we wouldn’t have a single wolf in
Yellowstone right now,” he says. “If this is allowed to
stand, it sets a terrible precedent. These kinds of issues will
come up over and over again, because animals don’t recognize
political borders.”